Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Why We Can’t Do War Anymore

“You led us into a war zone with no way out?” – Inception

Also, when cats rebel in the Navy, is that mewtiny?

“Get there first with the most men,” is a quote that is attributed to Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. This was translated by the New York Times® in 1917 as “Git thar fustest with the most mostest” because, well, because of course they did.

This reached its zenith during World War II. Defeating Germany and Japan wasn’t so much of a military operation but was rather an economic operation. It was the economy that could produce the mostest fustest.

One example is the aircraft carrier. The United States entered World War II with eight aircraft carriers, of which seven were “fleet carriers” and the other one was a small “escort” carrier.

It ended with 28 fleet carriers, 9 light carriers, and over 70 escort carriers, making (best guess) 101 operational carriers on in August, 1945 when Japan surrendered after we dropped two portable stars on their island. This worked. We could afford to build the planes, atomic bombs, and the ships while still having enough money left over to afford to get a couple of nice ribeyes.

We didn’t just outproduce the Axis, we outproduced them so thoroughly that by the end of the war we had more aircraft carriers than most countries have paved roads.

When the Navy recruiter asked if I could swim, I asked him, “Why? Have we run out of ships?”

World War II and the following Cold War were economic wars. How much capital could the United States and the Soviet Union throw into weapons programs to get there fustest with the mostest? Well, trillions. Ultimately, the sheer cost of Soviet weapons programs combined with their crappy commie economy caused the whole thing to fall over.

The United States had perfected Modern Warfare, which was really just having the economy produce millions of tons of weapons that we hoped never to use, and occasionally smashing a country with a few missiles or invading Iraq and Afghanistan a couple of times. Our technology was amazing. Our previous capital investments allowed us to win any sort of World War II battle we might run into. You know, if Rommel and the Bockauge Korps appears from a parallel universe and decides to invade Ohio.

Yay! I knew we could do it!

There’s a city in Ohio called Engagement. It’s between Dayton and Marion.

But things change, and technology changes.

The biggest change to the world has been the cheap drone. It’s not cheap when the military does it, since the military procurement process makes things stupidly expensive. On Amazon®, there is a drone available that will carry a 30-kilogram payload. An M107 155mm projectile carries about 7kg of explosive. I have no idea what Comp B costs, but the drone is $15,000 retail, so a nation can buy those in bulk and air drop the equivalent of an M107 shell with ease and with precision for less than $20,000 a trip, and, say, less than $2,000 if you reuse the drone.

An M777 155mm howitzer costs over $4million. To be fair, the Pentagon could turn that $15,000 drone into a $2million program if allowed to, complete with a 47 page PowerPoint© about diversity, equity, and inclusion plus the requirement that it have a non-gendered toilet. This is our military’s true superpower.

I hear that in California they have a beach covered in frozen waffles: Sandy Eggo®.

The capital model of build more stuff that gets there quickly that the Soviets Russians relied on when they invaded Ukraine broke down because it’s now changed. A $4million tank can be taken out easily by the cheap drone. In fact, I’d imagine you could get more than 300 of the drones for the price of one tank, and if you re-use them just twice, that’s 600 to 1200 shots perfectly on target, which isn’t warfare, it’s Prime Day© for explosions.

Sure, they’ve had to move to fiber-optics because of jamming.

The bigger problem has been the cheap drone plane, which are currently chewing up Russian refineries. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are using them to attack each other. They’re cost is somewhere between $10,000 to $40,000 per unit, as a guess. These are cheaply made fixed wing planes that carry 100-pound warheads. Who needs a bomber? Who needs a pilot?

Now, for $40,000, one of these planes can easily cause $10,000,000 damage to an oil refinery.

Which brings us to the Strait of Hormuz.

The initial attacks on the vessels shipping sweet, sweet oil out to the world was done using $200,000-ish anti-ship missiles. That’s expensive, so recently they’ve swapped out and are using Shahed® fixed-wing drones that the Russian fixed-wing drones are based on. Again, cost is probably about $10,000 to $40,000 per unit.

The cost of the drones is probably about $750,000 to $5,000,000.

Total.

And what did that cost the economies of the world?

$1.5-$3 trillion.

That’s a 300,000 to 1 return at the low end.

If that works, it’ll be a crude awakening.

The previous models required men to be moved, and the more of them the better, with more guns and banks and planes and bombs equaling victory. Victory was about who had the most capital, and who could bring the most people to the front and build the most bombers and have enough pilots to keep flying them.

In the new models, a base within missile or drone range isn’t an asset, it’s a target. The 11 supercarriers are now . . . targets.

They are very large, very expensive targets that need to be kept so far from the actual fighting that they’re mostly useful for looking impressive in press releases and photo ops. At $13 billion a ship with 6,000 personnel on board, we’ve somehow created a weapon so valuable we can’t afford to use it. It’s less of a warship than a very large, very slow hostage with its own zip code.

The final result of the “war is a capital competition” has produced a hostage with a flight deck that needs to stay a continent away from the fight and replaced thousands of men and billions of dollars with a guy, a laptop, and decent wifi.

And you don’t want to see the planned “Special Forces”.

War in an interconnected world has ceased to look anything like war from 1943. Like in the book Dune, the idea to war now is to deprive your enemy of something they can’t live without: “He who can destroy a thing, controls it.”

The Strait of Hormuz proves this, but it’s not the only inflection point where physical resources or the world’s economy is constrained.

Taiwan, for instance, produces 65% of the world’s computer chips. Taiwan also produces more than 90% of the most advanced chips.

China is vulnerable, too. The Strait of Malacca moves 80% of China’s oil. There are others. In a global, interconnected world getting there first with the most men is less important, or a navy that has to hide in a corner like my cat when I turn on the vacuum.

I never trust five star reviews on them, it’s really hard to get a perfect vacuum.

Now, the key is having the fundamental ability to control something your enemy literally can’t live without.

I’ll translate for the New York Times©: Take thet stauff they gots to hav.

Citizen Vigilante: A Movie For Our Time

“Remember: I do this for you, until you learn to do it for yourself.” – Citizen Vigilante

Since the main character was an American fighting invading rapists in Europe, could this movie have been called Alien Vs. Predator? (all memes as-found)

First, I promise I’m not planning on making this a movie review blog. If you’ll note, most of the movies I’ve individually reviewed either show the best of what we can be as a people or the propaganda that has been inflicted on the world for decades. Now, we’re into a third case: a movie that’s reviewed because of its immediacy.

I once left a positive Yelp® review at the DMV noting how helpful and customer-service focused they were. The manager fired everyone.

I first heard about Citizen Vigilante this week on X®. What I heard, resonated. Here’s a quote from the titular (hehehe) character from fairly early on in the movie:

Who we are and what we do has ramifications in our lives, and in the lives of everyone around us, hm? You don’t understand? All right. Pay attention, let me explain this to you. If you get onto a bus and you don’t pay your ticket, if you go to the movie theater, if you grab a banana at a grocery store and you don’t pay, eventually, the cost of everything will go up. If ten percent doesn’t pay, the cost will go up ten percent to cover the loss, and that’s not fair. You might not understand this, but think about it. I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.

I’m sure that this resonates with 99% of the regular readers here. This is the philosophy that separates a high-trust civilization from a low-trust civilization. This one attitude, that you pay for what you take, that wealth is earned into existence, not cheated from another is what has made the West and every other civilization that follows this, great.

And high home prices and long commutes are the price we pay to avoid living around “civilized” society.

I have been saying for years on this blog and even longer in person that the purpose of the justice system is to keep people from taking justice into their own hands, and it appears that Europe has reached the breaking point. Uwe Boll, who I’ve really not been familiar with before this, made this movie.

He wrote it, directed it, and financed it. It’s not a big budget Hollywood© film, but it’s a labor of his heart. Boll was originally going to title this movie Dark Knight, but Warner Brothers© sent a cease and desist, so he had to compromise there. Does he bow to political correctness here and there?

Sure, but in minor enough ways that I’m not going complain. However, I’m going to make a bold statement: this film is more red-pilled than Death Wish. It is garlic to Hollywood’s© vampire.

I am extremely smart: I have a theoretical degree in physics.

The genius of Boll is that by doing it himself, he could put up a big middle finger to the people that would silence him and write and film any damn thing he wanted. And Germany has done so, not giving the film a rating, which means I think that you can legally own it, but I don’t think you can legally buy it or sell it.

Why ban it? The violence isn’t all that bad. The singular sex scene isn’t anything to write home about. No. The Powers That Be think this movie is dangerous.

Based on history, I think this decision will make kids want to watch it even more. I’ll admit, it made me want to watch it more than the other crap Hollywood© is putting out.

As I wrote earlier, it’s low budget. The “me-too” crusade made the actor Armie Hammer effectively radioactive, so I don’t think he was doing much nor do I think he cost a lot. Hammer is, however, perfect in the protagonist role in this film. If he signed up for a low salary and a percentage of the gross profits, well, he’s certainly a happy man. It was released on June 19, and Citizen Vigilante has already grossed over $67 million dollars by Tuesday. This was at a reported cost of somewhere around $9 million to make the film, though I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of these numbers: the source was “crap I found on the Internet”.

But I think they’re making money, which is good because some people have had a hard time finding work.

I left my job to pursue a dream of working in archeology. My career is in ruins.

The movie is also short, clocking in at 89 minutes (in metric, that’s 8.9 decahours). That’s good. It left me wanting more, rather than leaving me thinking, “that’s it?” or thinking, “man, this movie is dragging along”. It was just as long as it needed to be and the conclusion is satisfying and it had one line in it that had me howling with laughter, but maybe that will just be me.

I’m not going to spoil the line, and please don’t in comments.

I’m also not going to spoil the plot. It’s not a complicated one, and not surprising in any fashion.

What’s a GloboLeftist’s most effective birth control? Their personality.

Will Hollywood™ make more of this?

I don’t know. I doubt it. Will Boll and Hammer? I hope so. I’d like to see more of this character. I recommend this movie, but keep in mind it’s not for kids.

So, if you want more things like this, buy it, don’t stream it for free. (JW note: after I wrote this, Uwe Boll put it up for free on X® for 48 hours, so, there’s that exception, which I believe Mr. Musk paid for out of his couch-cushion money. I think it will still be available until the end of 6/25/26. LINK)

If ten percent doesn’t pay, the cost will go up ten percent to cover the loss, and that’s not fair. You might not understand this, but think about it. I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.

Dog Ate My Homework, Sniffles Edition

Headache, stuffy nose. Enjoy. Comments on some. Might be similar level of effort on Friday, depends on how Thursday goes. Enjoy!

Game film from one of my peewee football games. You’ll know me when you see me:

I have found 100% of Indian call center employees get quite angry when you ask them to put someone who speaks English on the line.

You may be famous, but are you Tony Hawk famous?

We’re getting closer, boys:

Responsible for everything, I guess:

Things are getting spicy in Blighty:

Well, that’s the way to market this one:

Condensed version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

Now this would be fun to do in Italy:

Me before I discovered socks:

Teutoburg Forest And Immigration Policy

“What of Arminius?” – Spartacus: Blood and Sand

Ma Wilder yelled at me after I went jogging with Julius and Augustus. “Never run with a pair of Caesars!” (most memes as-found)

It was September 7, 9 A.D.

Like ducks, three Roman legions comprising 20,000 to 30,000 men under the command of Publius Quinctilius Varus were looking to head south for the winter. Romans campaigned in the summer in Germany, and then went back across the Rhine for their winter camps where they, I don’t know, drank wine. Maybe the men of the XVII, XVIII, and XIX legions studied hard for their Roman Legionnaire test in hopes of getting a C after having V beers?

Anyway, this trip home for the winter, one of the officers advising Varus was a 27-year-old named Arminius. Arminius, likely the son of a German nobleman, had been taken as a hostage from a German tribe at around the age of 10. For 17 years, Arminius had been raised in Rome, gone to Roman schools, been given Roman military training, and was even raised to the social rank of Equestrian, the second highest social rank at the time.

Arminius, knowing the country, told Varus that he knew a shortcut back to the winter quarters. It would be easy, and they could make a side stop along the way to show some Germanic tribes that had been FA the FO part.

A shortcut and a smackdown: two problems with one solution.

All they had to do was skip the well-known and well-guarded path home and go through a forest or two. “And who doesn’t like a trip through the forest? It even has a cool name, the Teutoburg Forest.

“It’ll be the trip of a lifetime!”

Varus: “It’s scary in the forest.” Arminius: “You’re scared? I have to walk out of here alone.”

Now, moving 20,000 to 30,000 guys isn’t easy, and it was especially hard because rather than having a wide space to move through, the Roman column was likely over 10 miles long. Oh, and Arminius told Varus, “Hey, I’ll take all these German auxiliary troops and go get the rest of the guys to support you. Don’t worry, I’ll leave you some of my best guys who know the country. They’re totally not spies.”

While the Romans were in the long line, they were attacked by forest Germans. Not a lot, just enough tire out the Romans and damage their supplies. When this big snake of an army finally finished up for the day, they got to a strong fort that the first-arriving legionnaires had erected, making it a good, strong Roman erection.

Oh, and those totally not spies? They disappeared by the 9^th.

Shapes that commit crimes are often sentenced to prism.

Then it started raining. A lot. The Romans decided to try to escape by going forward. On muddy ground, where the only choice was walking right next to the forest or in the swamp. And the path was covered in trees that had been knocked down, slowing them down.

As this was an ambush, the Germans were well prepared, had cover, and even had made walls so they could attack the Romans without exposing themselves.

The result was a slaughter. There are a lot of details, but Varus ended up literally falling on his own sword in the approved manner for being such an idiot, though his head did make a Planes, Trains, and Automobiles-style trip back to Rome. The three legions themselves were shattered. I’d use the word decimated, but that would indicate that only one out of ten was killed. Nope, in this case Arminius and the Germans killed most of the Romans in battle, sacrificed the officers, and enslaved a few of the common troops.

It was all over by September 11.

Why was 10 scared? He was in the middle of 9/11.

This wasn’t where it ended, no. The Germanic tribes wiped out all Roman military presence east of the Rhine. This was a decisive victory and ended Rome’s desire to conquer the Germanic tribes as it had Gaul. It also led to this quote attributed to Caesar Augustus: “Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!”

Augustus was miffed. And Rome was miffed. But the Germanic tribes lived on.

Tacitus records that in 15 A.D., when the Roman military commander and father of future Roman Caesar Caligula, Germanicus, visited the Teotoburg Forest battle site that there were “bones scattered across the ground” along with “fragments of weapons and limbs of horses”. Oh, and human heads, nailed to tree trunks.

Augustus used to prank his praetorian guard by pretending to choke on his food. It’s an old gag.

I came away from thinking about this battle with several ideas. The most important one was Arminius himself. Despite being given nearly every advantage that Roman society had to offer, Arminius was never Roman. He was brilliant, he was exceptional enough to be given military leadership, and he had spent seven more years as a Roman than the ten he had as a German.

But there was no amount of Rome that would make Arminius less German. And, rightly, Arminius is a hero to Germans.

That forest was really full of Germans that day. You could say it was krauted.

But he’s also a warning to Americans.

As I look to the United States today, I see a country that is fragmented in many ways that Rome wasn’t at the time. How many more soldiers like Major Nidal Malik Hassan, who killed 14 people and shot 32 others trying to kill them are in the armed forces?

It’s not just moslems, though, it’s every single person inside our borders that is against the traditional Western values that made the nation is a potential Arminius. Every business leader that loots America and hollows it out for their home nation is a potential Arminius. How is it legal that an Indian CEO of Microsoft© fired thousands of Americans at the same time he hired his countrymen in nearly exactly the same number on H-1B visas to fill those jobs?

Never forget what they really think of us.

Arminius is a hero to Germans, at least the ones that don’t speak Arabic at home. But he’s also a warning to all of Western Civilization that taking the advice of foreigners or people with a primary allegiance against you and who want to take you into dense dark forests is still a pretty bad idea. I’m C percent sure.

Platoon: Movie Propaganda And Serial Killer Jokes

“Now, I got no fight with any man who does what he’s told, but when he don’t, the machine breaks down. And when the machine breaks down, we break down. And I ain’t gonna allow that in any of you. Not one.” – Platoon

Syphilis, AIDS and a Timeshare: what’s difference? You can get rid of syphilis.

I saw Platoon in the theater when it came out.

I watched Platoon, and left the theater as the credits rolled.

I was filled with Raisenettes®, yet exhausted with no desire to ever watch that movie ever again. But last weekend it showed up in the “movies you might like to watch” and since The Mrs. hadn’t seen it, we started watching it. Only I finished, since she fell asleep while on patrol and was caught in a firefight with some NVA regulars. But I finished it.

Again.

As a movie, Platoon looks and feels like a slice of reality coming from the “nerdy dolphin talking about hang gliding” me who has never been to Vietnam nor been in a foxhole with Charlie Sheen. I’ve seen many films shot on bigger budgets that don’t feel nearly as real as Platoon. I imagine that part of that is because the writer/director, Oliver Stone, actually did serve in Vietnam as a ground-pounder and this movie is certainly based on his actual experiences there.

I have a lot of thoughts about Vietnam, but this post isn’t about Vietnam. This post is about what the movie Platoon really was: propaganda to make you hate America and traditional American values in 1986.

Let’s start with the time that this movie came out: 1986.

1986 was part of Reagan’s Morning in America. The GloboLeft hated that because the GloboLeft loved the Soviets. I mean, they also love illegal immigrants, but they really love the Soviets. 1986 was also the year of Top Gun, which was the top grossing movie of the year.

My friend the physicist said that he’ll only play volleyball in a vacuum with perfect spheres.

Why was Top Gun the highest earning film of the year even though it wasn’t that great of a movie?

Because people loved America. And yes, I liked Top Gun, but you’ve got to admit it didn’t really have a plot. Top Gun: Maverick at least had a plot.

I digress.

Back to the “people love America” thing. Hollywood© had changed since Reagan was there. When Reagan was there, Hollywood was subversive, but it didn’t hate absolutely everything about America.

Now a majority of Hollywood© did. So, it created one of the most effective propaganda movies of all time, Platoon. I must admit, the message of the movie makes Trotsky look like a patriotic America and Charlie Sheen look morally upright.

Charlie Sheen drew the line at cocaine.

What, then, was the message?

Traditional American values suck. Almost* every leader was shown to be either out of touch, incompetent, sycophantic, or evil. In one scene almost* all of the leadership of the titular (heh) platoon was in a barracks. It wasn’t fun. It looked like your grandpa’s poker night with his old smelly friends, ruled over by the despotic and disfigured Satan of our story: Staff Sergeant Barnes.

This is an effective scene. Your brain subconsciously looks at pretty things and thinks that they’re good. The opposite holds true as well. Barnes is established and reinforced as the antagonist. He is, for this movie, Evil personified.

Wait, what? This is a war movie, aren’t the enemy supposed to be the bad guys? Not for a large chunk of Hollywood©. Remember Hanoi Jane Fonda? They hated America and wanted communism.

The Vietnamese in this movie aren’t the bad guys, they’re just some sort of natural occurrence, like the weather. Put the story on a boat and replace the Vietnamese with a storm and it’s the same movie.

But, move to the cool kid bunker! They had dope! They had cool music! They were doing cool and groovy things! No leadership here, at all, except for cool and groovy dope-smoking Sergeant Elias.

Elias isn’t the protagonist, the protagonist is the character played by Charlie Sheen, who might as well have been called Pvt. Nobody as cardboard as he is, since he only takes one action in the entire movie. No. Elias, played by Willem Dafoe, is Jesus. His betrayal and final death scene with his arms outstretched as if on the cross is heavy-handed. Even young me got that.

If only I can die with such symmetry!

And, in this movie, Jesus was cool and smoked pot. Dafoe would play Jesus in another movie two years later: The Last Temptation of Christ. This was back at a time when the Catholic Church actually managed to be against something other than being against people saying mean things about rapefugees.

But I digress. Again.

The movie is clear. Barnes, who represents traditional American society and traditional American values, is bad. Elias, who represents stoner culture, is good.

When you analyze propaganda, another questions to ask is, “Who is it aimed at?”

Charlie Sheen was the stand-in for the target, the person the audience is supposed to identify with. In several masterfully shot scenes, I felt like I was in Private Sheen’s place. That’s effective film making. Sheen is early wave Gen X.

This makes sense, since Gen X was the target.

Early, Atari© Xers like myself were the primary ticket purchasers of R-rated movies at the time Platoon came out. It’s where we took our dates on a Friday night, and young men were the primary decision makers when it came to selecting a movie to see.

Platoon was demoralization aimed straight at Gen X. Here is what it was saying:

“Reagan making you feel good? Perhaps a bit too good? Enjoyed Red Dawn or Top Gun? Well, white people are awful, except for the stoner socialists who hate America. Those are the real good guys. And Hollywood©. Hollywood™ loves you.”

Imagine how surprised Jeff was when he committed suicide! (meme as found)

Hollywood© does not love you. But they loved this movie with the heat of a thousand sons. Nominated for seven Academy Awards®, it won three, including best picture and best director. Hollywood© loved this movie. So did critics. And it did well at the box office, finishing up third for the year, behind the previously mentioned Top Gun and the heavy period drama that was Crocodile Dundee.

I bought two tickets to it, so my $10 was in the $138,530,565 that it’s credited with.

When I finished watching it, I wanted to take a shower because in the end, the character I’m supposed to identify with, Pvt. Cardboard, kills the stand-in for America: Sergeant Barnes. On purpose. Murder. Demoralization.

Again, I didn’t have the words to describe nor the wisdom to understand the propaganda at play in the film. I just know that I felt revolted.

What does a serial killer do when he finds Waldo®? Wears Waldo™.

But now I see what was going on through clear eyes.

Maybe it was because I didn’t have any Raisenettes™?

SpaceX®: The Final Frontier?

“Time to musk up.” – Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

You know who gives kids a bad name? Elon Musk.

Elon Musk has just launched his SpaceX® IPO at a price of $135. If you were in on the initial purchase, you’ve already printed money, as the current price is now at $216 as I write this. This is bitcoin level price increase. And, it shows Elon Musk’s meme effect. I expect soon enough that he’ll announce he’s moved his headquarters to an orbital space bombardment platform.

For tax reasons, you know.

As much as the GloboLeftists like to make fun of Elon for buying Twitter© and turning it into X© and destroying 30% of its market value, Musk has certainly had the better of that conversation since he’s now a trillionaire and his having an amplified voice on X© certainly hasn’t hurt.

Regardless: quatro commas.

That’s a lot of money.

Step 2: Profit. Step 1: Time Machine.

As I write this, SpaceX© has a market capitalization of $2.8 trillion dollars. That’s more than Amazon©. It’s more than Saudi Aramco®. There are only four stocks bigger than SpaceX©: Apple®, Nvidia™, Google©, and Microsoft© and I think it passed Microsoft® this afternoon. And, in the scheme of things, it’s pretty close to being the biggest company.

Ever.

To put this into perspective, SpaceX© by itself is now worth as much money as all the aerospace companies and defense companies in the world. Combined.

Part of this is due to the relatively small number of SpaceX™ shares available. SpaceX© sold 5% of itself, getting $85 billion to pay off debt and buy Elon something nice. If Elon had dumped all of the stock, I’m betting it wouldn’t have near that valuation because someone would have had to buy the other $2.7 trillion worth of shares, and it’s not like Jeff Bezos has that in his couch cushions.

To be fair, no one has that in their couch cushions except the federal government, and they’re too busy giving it to Democrat agitators to bring in foreigners and agitate for communism. You know, things that benefit society.

The North Korean gymnast didn’t win in the Olympics©, but her execution was flawless.

That small float has led to the stock, in my opinion, being a meme. It’s the Dogecoin© of equities. It has enormous value because Elon is associated with it. It also, unlike the usual IPOs accessible only to folks with a half million bucks or so, is accessible to anyone that can fog a mirror. Beyond that, it’s also going to be required to be picked up by several stock indices soon. This will require things like pension funds and mutual funds to buy it.

What is “it”, though? What makes up SpaceX™?

The smallest piece is actually what people think of: the rockets. Even though Musk has the single largest, most active, and most efficient space program on the planet, that’s not a huge market. I mean, it’s more money than I have, but Elon’s biggest customer is . . . Elon.

Starlink© is the only profitable piece of this project. My eldest, The Boy, has Starlink©. He likes it. It’s good, if you’re not close to an actual wire. The problem for other people wanting to make a space-based Internet is that Elon has the big lead here, and there’s probably only room for one company.

Jeff Bezos was going to try to make an orbital communications network, but his rockets don’t work, so he has no way to send stuff to space cheaply. Cheaply? Speaking of Jeff’s wife . . .

I digress.

I knew Bezos’ rocket program schedule was in trouble when he hired Elton John. I think it’s gonna be a long, long time.

So, what else is SpaceX©? It’s the X™ formerly known as Twitter©. Which seems an odd pairing with the other two, but not as strange as the last piece: xAI®.

In summary, SpaceX© is:

Rockets: Total market? $370 billion. Not sure if that includes the Iranian market. As it is, he’s showing a $662 million loss in the rocket segment in 1Q26, but that includes blowing up all of those Starship™ tests. If NASA were doing the same thing, it would have already cost a trillion dollars and they wouldn’t have launched the first one yet.

If some of SpaceX® junk destroys a city in north Texas, would the headline be “Debris does Dallas”? (as-found)

Space connections: Total market? $1.6 trillion. Elon can probably earn most of this and it’s already earning him over a billion dollars a year. As the Internet is primarily made of porn and cat videos, made $1.1 billion last quarter selling virtual pussy . . . cats.

The old Twitter™: No known profit. By transferring the old Twitter® to SpaceX™ that does make Elon the X® owner.

AI: $26.5 trillion. Right now, he’s losing only $2.5 billion a quarter at this, which makes him a rank amateur when compared with OpenAI®. OpenAI© lost $38.5 billion last year, so Musk needs to lose a lot more money this year to catch up.

One of these is not like the other. And I’d argue that one of these isn’t remotely reasonable.

You can do your own math. But the big thing to me is this is quite like Elon Musk’s junk drawer that has a flashlight and an old 9-volt battery and some slightly-dull colored pencils and an old AC adaptor that I’ve forgotten exactly what it adapted. Starlink™ and the rockets make sense together. But xAI®? Was that just thrown in there to puff up the price?

It was. And maybe sometime in the future he’ll toss Tesla© and Grimes and some old socks in there, too.

See! I didn’t make this up. It takes accountants to make things up. (as-found)

The big connection there would be that, I guess, that Elon can make orbital data centers that don’t require power generation on Earth or cooling water. And Elon’s only going to build (checks notes) a million of them. That’s pretty ambitious since he’s only tossed up 10,000 Starlink© satellites at about $2 million each. If he got the same price (doubtful) it would still cost $2 trillion. Probably closer to $20 trillion.

Which is . . . not going to happen. In fact, I think the SpaceX™ IPO will be looked back as the point where the A.I. bubble began to deflate. But I’ve been wrong before: I missed some bits and wouldn’t have bet that it would have gone up as fast as it has.

Remember like they said in Apollo 13, failure is always an option. (as-found)

What is the end game, then?

Well, Elon’s end game is to make Elon insanely rich, for one. To be fair, he’s already gotten insanely rich through selling electric cars and built a space program that exceeds the capacity of every other nation on Earth, and has fathered something like 70 little Musks which might be part of his own diversification strategy: a genetic junk-drawer, as it were.

What’s the long game? Maybe an orbital space bombardment platform. Or a government on Mars peopled entirely by those offspring.

Well, at least now he has space for rent.

This is not advice or a solicitation to buy or sell or rent or trade or loan or barter or whatever other adjective. It’s a humor post. I actually hope Elon does send up a million rockets, but I’m thinking it’s more likely he’ll have a million kids, which, with enough investor money is much more possible but I wouldn’t want go on a long car trip with a million kids because I’d be tempted to sell or rent or trade or loan or barter the lowest performing 10% of the children into the PEZ® mines. Also, I think having a million kids would make me sore. Which also might be Elon’s plan. Regardless, this isn’t investment, dating, or reproductive advice.

America 350: Looking Backward from 2126

“Time is relative, okay? It can stretch and it can squeeze but it can’t run backwards.” – Interstellar

See? I do requests. Heck, I even have two requests: First, after I die, I want my remains to be scattered on rides at Disneyworld©. Second, I don’t want to be cremated.

This portion of the project will focus on the years from 2026 to 2126, with emphasis of the fifty years between 2026 and 2076.

2026 was only celebrated as the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in the most minimal way possible, mainly through consumption of something called InstaGrams© which are believed to be a form of snack-cracker covered in TikTok®, which is believed to be a spread made mainly out of seed oils and high-fructose corn syrup, but records are spotty.

What happened after this celebration?

The economic situation was already rough in the United States. Rather than having a currency set in a fixed number of units, like our fixed number of 100,000,000 BasedBux©, or currency based on an actual physical commodity like gold, silver, or PEZ©, the currency of the United States was just printed at will. Even at the time it was recognized that the U.S. Dollar was mainly fictional in value, and owning them was better than nothing, but that the asset itself was going to go to zero over time.

2032 . . . who was saying that years ago?

The political temptation of the United States to print “wealth” at will was abetted by the large network of vassal states that would accept the dollar and send the United States actual physical objects in exchange for a depreciated fictional currency. Essentially, this allowed the United States to tax the world.

When looked at through the lens of the events that followed, it seems silly that this was the way that the world economy worked. The Great Crash of Monday, October 21, 2030, however, saw the formal recognition of the failure of this system. Markets rarely fail all at once, and in this case, there were many cracks that were visible before the crash, of which the crack-up boom of the late 2020’s stock market in the United States was one: any actual asset was recognized as a better deal than the rapidly unwinding dollar.

The economic crisis of 2032 was the final nail in the composition of the 50 United States, but it had help.

Since the advent of the Internet and the creation of its most well-known carrier, the “smart phone”, drift had set in. The 20^th Century had been the story of the world coming together, where, for instance, the culture of the United States had coalesced from the various regional cultures into a largely singular culture. By the 1980s, the country had been largely unified under the banner of mass media.

This was a similar story across the world wherever that the people were wealthy enough to have televisions: there was a single culture, a single story, a single narrative with minor variations that were allowed.

I’ve heard that penguins mate for life, which is certainly impressive. Don’t they stop for food?

The Internet and “smart phone” had broken that barrier. Any community with any idea could now be seen. No belief was so obscure that a group of people with similar ideas couldn’t be found that shared that same idea. This divergence led to a complete and utter loss of national identity by the late 2020s and placed enough stress that the most basic drive of mammals, reproduction, was being subverted by society. One biologist asked, “Do you understand the level of stress you have to put a mammal under to make it not want to breed?”

What was even worse for the cohesion of the United States was the evaporation of national myths that had been created in an attempt to create a unified country. For over a century, scientific facts related to race, intelligence, culture, and violence had been suppressed, even though those had been noted as empirical facts for over a thousand years in the past.

The Internet coupled with the wide proliferation of cameras dispelled those well-cultivated “myths” for all but the most committed by the early 2030s. In a United States that ceased to have an overwhelming majority of Western European-derived populace, what has happened at every point in history happened: cultural lines formed along racial lines, and self-segregation again took hold. First this was by neighborhood, then by city, then, finally, by region.

Both blacks and whites agree that Karmelo doesn’t deserve prison.

This diaspora took less than 20 years. In what had been the norm in the Southern United States for nearly its entire existence, the split appeared again. Hispanic businesses, black businesses, and white businesses and churches and funeral homes took hold nationwide.

This was mostly peaceful, but was driven by the intense riots of the 2030s, with a near complete segregation complete by 2050.

Mostly peaceful is how the process moved, but it was born in the riots that formed during the great economic crisis of 2032. These riots were born of an economic desperation as the economy of the United States was in transition due to the dollar collapse: the government ran on “money” and when no one believed that the dollar was money, the government ceased to be.

People had to protect themselves, and in the course of a weekend a major metropolis could be turned into a turned into a non-functional wasteland. It was not long until families began to look for places to move that were not, in the term of the time, “diverse”. Race relations devolved as the actual motives of the majority of blacks became clear and the word “racist” lost all of its power. The Great Coalescing was on.

With weakened governments and most nations on Earth dealing with their own issues due either to economics or demographics, the collapse of the United States during this time proceeded with little international interference outside of the Mexican de facto occupation of Southern California and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. As Mexican government was, at it’s strongest, weak, these areas were either effective anarchies or under the control of the cartels.

The best mapmaker was the guy who invented the little box that has all the symbols in it that explain what’s on the map. What a legend!

Approximately half of the population of the United States died during the Great Coalescing, either from direct random violence, direct political violence, or from deprivation related to the failure of economic, energy, and agricultural systems.

By 2076, the United States looked nothing like the nation that had seen the Bicentennial celebration. Though nominally still connected, the national government had little power as the East Coast was still the most violent part of the nation.

As the South convulsed in the Great Coalescing, the majority of black residents in southern cities had fled northward into the D.C.-Virginia-New York – Boston corridor. Already containing 15% of the population before the migration, it grew to 25% as ethnic minorities streamed in. Even today, it remains the highest crime area on the continent with only a limited police presence inside the zone and a strong border force outside.

In 2076, the rebuilding was in full swing. Elon Musk had set the basis for this with his BasedBux©, which were strictly limited in number to a total to 100,000,000, so they naturally grow in value. BasedBux© was a currency that was based on a fixed amount of gold that Musk donated to found the currency and paid dividends backed by his solar power satellite energy delivery system: SunPowerX©.

As the state governments regained footing, they looked at the issues that had created the problems. With money and energy solved, they looked at the other factor in the collapse of the United States as well as other countries: diversity. Thus, the state governments decided to focus on unity. The radical idea that telling the Truth might be a basis for governance was enshrined in many states, and hanging of several legislators emphasized the seriousness of the new policy.

You can’t hang a man with a wooden leg. You need a rope.

By 2076, a coalition Federal government was created by the state governments, which were the largest functional governments on the continent. The states were exceptionally varied in levels of control and laws. The states also made it clear that the federal government in no way would it be allowed to impact the laws of the individual states. The federal government also has no power at all over individual citizens, it was built as a mechanism for states to work out their issues between them, create treaties with foreign nations, and defend the totality of the country.

As we all know, the federal government is explicitly not allowed to tax, nor is it allowed to create money, nor is it allowed to invalidate state laws.

Areas not participating in the Reconstituted United States were the: Southern California, the Pacific Northwest coast, and the ungoverned D.C.-Boston corridor, though neighboring states do take part in periodic pacification expeditions.

By 2076, the population of the areas in the Reconstituted United States was steady at 125,000,000 people, and was beginning to grow to the 150,000,000 we see today in 2126. The Internet is still available, but the advent of mandatory public browsing histories solved most of the issues seen in the early 2010s and 2020s.

I’d like to thank the Wilder Institute for Serious Historical, Political, and Economic Zeitgeist Studies™, WISHPEZ©, for funding and support during this research.

Just Look At What You’ve Started!

“I fart in your general direction.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I saw the worst page in the dictionary, and what I saw was disgraceful, dishonest, and disgusting.

I find myself, time and again, beginning work that I know I will never see completed.

My time here is finite. That fact sits in the background of everything, the ticking clock.

Still, I keep launching projects where the meaningful results, if they arrive at all, will show up long after I am gone. Sometimes the gap stretches into decades or even centuries. The work starts now because the window for starting is now, even when the finish line sits on the other side of my own existence.

An example of that is the oldest written joke that we know, which is a flatulence joke. It’s not even a good joke. Heck, it’s so bad it’s not even Amy Schumer-tier.

But we know it. And it was a seed planted, thousands of years ago.

A proverb captures the feeling cleanly. It is often traced to ancient Greek sources: a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.

The personal version lands just as directly. I am planting metaphorical trees under whose shade I will never metaphorically sit. Or fart. Or whatever.

I can cut a log in half just by staring at it. I saw it with my own two eyes.

Having children supplies one clear case where we build that future. Earlier generations treated reproduction as something that largely happened without deliberate long-range planning: a Saturday night and a bottle of wine and, boom, Julius Caesar was born nine months later and was off invading Gaul nine months after that. Biology and circumstance and the Roman Legions carried most of the load.

Today the choice sits in the open.

I began a project whose success or failure will play out across lives that extend well past mine. The uncertainties related to having children arrive immediately, and stay. What sort of people will they become? What attitudes will they carry into whatever conditions they meet? How much of what I do now will actually matter when they make their own choices? Will the daily work of guidance and example turn out to have been enough? What sort of impact will they have on the lives of others?

These questions do not come with easy answers. I did it anyway, fully knowing that large parts of the outcome lie outside any direct observation I will ever have. I’m tossing a message in a bottle into the sea, and one day it will drift beyond my sight.

And it’s okay if you drop a bottle on your foot, since it’s a soft drink.

My writing here forms another example. Each idea or observation I write down moves outward like a ripple from a stone dropped in still water. Some ripples weaken quickly and vanish as distance grows from the initial perturbation. Other of my ripples cross paths with ripples started elsewhere and produce new patterns through interference in the brains of people I’ll never meet.

A smaller number may strengthen when surrounding conditions line up: when an idea meets receptive minds or aligns with events already in motion.

I have no reliable way to track the final shape any of this takes. Has any portion of it improved the world in any way?

I cannot measure that from inside.

What I can control is the attempt to keep what I write aligned with observable reality as closely as possible. The results are not always Beautiful. They are not always Good. They simply aim to stay as True as I can make them. When I’m lucky, they’re two of the three. When I’m very lucky, they’re all three.

Is a long metaphor a metaphiv?

Stepping back gives me yet another perspective.

A single human life occupies almost no space against the age of the Universe. The cosmos we can observe remains young even by its own standards.

Some red dwarfs carry enough fuel supplies to keep them burning for trillions of years, which is slightly longer than The Simpsons has been on TV. Distant descendants, if any exist at that scale, might live under skies lit by those dim red suns and occasionally consider their own origins.

Far more likely, the timescales involved would have erased any specific memory of earlier generations. The thread of continuity will be stretched to the utmost at that great depth of time and only the most basic, the greatest of what is Beautiful, Good and True will remain.

Yet, I keep starting these projects.

I keep choosing to begin work whose completion sits beyond my time on Earth. I try to retell stories that are older than any living man, stories of our history, of self-reliance, of bravery, of what is best in being human.

The way I tell those stories is imperfect and incomplete, but it’s just another tree planted without expectation of sitting under the finished shade.

Why do so few Germans commit crimes? Crimes are illegal.

Perhaps, at some vastly later point, whatever remains of humanity will retain at least a trace of humor about the whole arrangement and maybe a ripple from this time will impact them. That possibility, however small, supplies its own quiet justification for continuing to drop stones into the water.

Besides, farting is intrinsically funny, and if my fart joke survives a trillion years, well, that really would be a blast from the past.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: All It Takes Is A Spark

“All it took was a spark.” – Sherlock Holmes (2009)

That Asian lady on TV says to donate anything that doesn’t spark joy. Who is going to take all these illegal aliens?

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume VIII, Issue 1

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I have maintained the Clock O’Doom at 9., given the open support of assassination and criminality by the GloboLeft and the increase in violence as well as direct interference with ICE and the insertion of the military into law enforcement. Beware: the number can climb quickly.

My advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Sparks and Ignition – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Why Is It . . . ? – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 840 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Sparks and Ignition

I’ve been covering the UK as a part of the Violence and Censorship Update to the Weather Report as long as I’ve been doing it. The reason is simple: it’s a country that has a similar culture and is facing similar problems and it can be instructive. It also might be the Spark.

When you look at fires, they need three things: oxygen, fuel, and a spark. If I could extend the metaphor a bit, air would be the discontent in a population. It’s always around, and doesn’t cause a fire by itself. Anyone can be mad.

But the amplification, the fuel, is when people communicate their discontent. It’s why an absolute communication blackout occurred on those that were in any way skeptical of the governmental response of COVID or supportive of the obvious fact that the 2020 election was stolen.

Amplification, the fuel, was there when the George Floyd riots occurred.

They were planned. Oh, sure, not George in particular, but any video would have spread. After four years of Trump, the GloboLeftElite and GloboLeft activists were so angry that they wanted something, and any event on video that could be made to be the Spark would be amplified.

So, discontent plus amplification plus event = revolt.

It’s happening now in England. And in Ireland. The first relates to the murder of an 18 year old British university student, Henry Nowak, by a foreign invader. Can Brits have knives? Not without a liosense, guv’na. But if you’re a sikh you can. And one of them used that knife privilege to ventilate young Mr. Nowak. The spice on this already outrageous event?

They coppers were handcuffing Nowak as he died.

Nowak: “I’ve been stabbed.”

Evil Cop: “I don’t think you have, mate.”

Why evil? The coppers took the word of the sikh murderer that Mr. Nowak had, “Done a racism,” and handcuffed the bloodless hands of Mr. Nowak. The murderer or his family then hid the murder weapon, and stole Mr. Nowak’s phone, either for gain or to suppress evidence.

The next case is still developing: another foreign invader in Belfast was subject to oppression because he was arrested after being caught sawing the head off of an Irishman. Silly Irish! They should know that it’s illegal for them to be caught having their heads sawed off. That must have inconvenienced the poor refugee.

These are Sparks. White protests have been the result, though I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first that you’ve heard of either of these events, since news has been clamped down tight: they want to remove the fuel from the event. It can’t spread!

The result is that they’re trying to keep this from spreading.

The discontent is real. And the oxygen level that is starting to build up in the room is the fact that, as the economy falters for the young, they’re now seeing the wealth pump in action as countries try to bring in cheaper labor from overseas to replace skilled young British and American citizens. Zoomer disaffection is real, and their complaints are legitimate: 8 out of 10 jobs went to foreigners in the United States since 2020.

80%.

They are the oxygen level that keeps rising, and that’s the level that the GloboLeftElite wants to keep down at any cost.

What they want is to get rid of you.

When I started writing the Weather Reports eight years ago, I thought that Civil War 2.0 would be ideological.

It won’t be.

Violence and Censorship:

Stealing a country’s mythology is censorship, and you can see that in effect with the movies. At some point people will realize this is just forced humiliation.

Turks gave us a cool new name:

I guess making fun of Indians is off the menu, as Poop World Order was banned from X not long after this.

And when you brainwash white women, murder follows:

Oh, and women judges. Don’t forget them.

You can’t stop the signal, Mal. But California will keep trying.

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red. Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers though Iran is starting to show in the index..

And why isn’t giving jobs to aliens over qualified Americans legal?

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence indicators are down this month. The attempted assassination last month didn’t even flutter the number, which tells you how far down the road we are.

Political Instability: